FRANK SWINNERTON - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 03/30/1979 - HFSID 206165

FRANK SWINNERTON
Novelist Frank Swinnerton wrote this letter from England in 1979 to answer (as best he could) a teacher's question about "what gives a literary work lasting value".
Autograph letter signed "Frank Swinnerton" in blue ink. 2 pages, 6x8, 1 sheet, front and verso. Written in "England", March 30, 1979. In full: "Dear Mr Herbert I doubt if anybody could say with assurance what gives a literary work lasting value; but I will make a suggestion which perhaps your students could discuss. It is this. When we read a new book the qualities in it which strike us most are its novelty and appropriateness to the time. If we read the same book two (or five) years later, we too often find that its magic has evaporated. It has become what is called 'ephemeral.' But if, at every re-reading, it seems quite as good as was, that means that it is a really original work - one that only its authors could have written. As you well know, most books are [illegible] of other books, or of the life around us. If they are not [illegible], or if they do not grace-their inspiration from current fashion, they will bear reading again and again. But originality is not novelty: it is the artistic expression of it's [sic] writer's imagination and experience in [illegible] own [illegible] unique. In the past, any work more than fifty years old automatically became a 'classic.' Nowaday [sic] this is not so. We demand that in each re-reading we discover new strengths and new beauties. It does not matter what [illegible] of book it is: the merely contemporary [illegible] must be augmented as a result of the growth in our [illegible]. As to the [illegible] to a writer's happiness or unhappiness in the [illegible] of talent or fame, these must vary. Your students can be sure that much depends upon the writer's temperament - [illegible] and natural' spirits. [illegible], I am [illegible], and I have never wanted to be great, famous, rich, or [illegible]. Others are different. The one characteristic I have noted is those who are really-original is a total lack of self-importance. They do not compare themselves to other writers; They simply go on doing what it is natural to them to do. But they have been, in my experience, more conscious of this [illegible] than of [illegible]; and I doubt if any one of them has been really happy. With every good wish for your splendid work, [illegible]". Swinnerton (1884-1982) was an English author and critic. In all, he published over 30 novels between 1909 and 1976, many of which were iconoclastic, highly sensuous and just generally modernist. His most successful novel was 1917's Nocturne, but he retained at least some of that success for the rest of his life. Swinnerton was a familiar literary presence in the first half of the 20th Century (he was an editor for authors like Aldous Huxley before he took up writing full-time), and accumulated plenty of material for works like the memoir The Georgian Literary Scene (1935), two autobiographies and the book Arnold Bennett: A Last Word (1978). Lightly toned and creased. Show-through touches signature and body of letter. Folded once and unfolded. Otherwise in fine condition.